Tl; dr

Why am I reading this again?

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:46:56 GMT

I'm reading Tokyo Crazy Paradise again, don't know why. The scanlations at One Manga and Manga Fox are still the terrible ones I read way back when. Pages left untranslated, pages with speech bubbles left blank, and questionable knowledge of English. I'm half-seriously thinking of writing up a TV Tropes page for it, but I'll probably wait for someone else to start and just add tropes. Anyway, one character who was pretty much made to be disliked shows up around the end of chapter 20. She looks like this. This is the male lead in drag about fifty chapters later. And of course the author says she looks like a male transvestite... so yeah.

It's an interesting series, but I have a hard time deciding if it's actually a good one. It's funny at times and there are a lot of fight scenes, the characters are a bit more than cardboard cutouts, but I can't quite commit to recommending it to other people

On the other hand, I do very much recommend the manga series Emma (or Victorian Romance Emma) to everyone who doesn't exclusively read shonen series. The last volume has just come out with several chapters of side-stories and Emma and William's wedding (after a substantial time-skip unless I miss my guess). I also bought the Azumanga Daioh omnibus because I like the series' humour and getting it on paper allows me to avoid the anime version's opening and closing songs, which make me want to hurt someone.

Bugger Off is a great song and suits my mood far too much of the time. If I'm ever in a bar with friends at closing time I might try to organize a performance. Well, if I kinda know the people working there. And I'm not entirely sure why this exists, but it's pretty good.

Merry Christmas

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:34:40 GMT

Well, one exam bright and early tomorrow and I'll be done with this semester. It's a bit of a blur looking back, but I'm glad that I'll only be sitting one 'real' final for a course load of 15 hours. And I'm carrying 17 next semester, but that's because student teaching is 11 hours and is the closest thing to a real job you can get without getting paid. All I know for sure about where I'll be student teaching is that it will be somewhere within forty miles of Athens and that assignments will be finalized by 6 January (classes start on the seventh).

I've beaten Ace Combat 5 again, but I overwrote my old save with (almost?) everything unlocked and I've had to reacquire all the planes and paint jobs (which cannot be obtained until after obtaining a plane). A few of those aces are real pains in the ass to knock down, including one who flew into the ground to avoid me. As in he dove into the ground with the target box following him and everything and then emerging a couple miles over that way. So now I'm playing Ace Combat 04 and getting used to its stiffer controls again. Everything just feels so slow and I'm not looking forward to night missions. Oh, and in this game, you have to pay for paint jobs and the top planes are kinda pricey.

For my DS, I'm playing Phantasy Star Zero, which is a decent game, if repetitive. The jump between normal and hard difficulty is also kinda ridiculous. I bought Trauma Center the other day and it can be pretty damn hard even though I'm just starting out.

I came across a site called GOG.com where you can buy and download old games. Not terribly useful for those with slow connections, but my CD/DVD drive that I almost never use seems to have given up the ghost. Anyway, I bought Septerra Core from them and it's pretty good, though I can't wait to get to the part of the game where you're powerful enough to end battles quickly. Settlers 2 is kinda heavy on micromanagement and will eat your life if you let it, but it's still fun. And Warlords Battlecry 3 is a great RTS with RPG elements if you can keep your retinue units from dying.

I've come across a new manga called Love DNA XX by the author of The Day of Revolution and Princess Princess and a friend. Those uniform look nothing at all like stuff from Utena. Really. It has potential, even if it's set in one of those futures where men have all died off that some people are so fond of writing.

So yeah, not much to say. Still have this LJ, but I don't know how much I'll be posting here from now on.

Old Games

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:47:30 GMT

So, another month or so has gone by. Georgia's playing Florida tomorrow and that's always a good game if I remember to watch. Anyway, school's going fine, but getting up at O'Dark Thirty is getting to me. Not much to talk about there.

I bought the original Ace Combat (Air Combat here) and Ace Combat 2 the other day. I've played through the first one and I'm on the last mission of the second game. The first game was a Playstation 1 launch title from back in '95 according to GameFAQs and the second game came out two years later. Air Combat is pretty dreadful, especially in the graphics department. Backgrounds are extremely basic and it's real easy to get terribly lost. The original Ace Combat Canyon Mission (TM) is absolutely terrible because of the graphics: it's nearly impossible to distinguish the two walls of the very narrow canyon so I had a hard time judging turns. The game also predates analog controllers for the Playstation and the D-pad is not ideal for controlling aircraft. Oh, and all your planes get a hideous red and purple paintjob since the series originally had a phoenix logo. It might be the only game in the series where you can pick your missions from a world map.

Neither game has much of a plot. You're a sorta generic but very good pilot hired to put down a rebellion of some sort and they hand you money for blowing stuff up. You can pay wingmen to accompany you on some missions, but it's not worth the money since they suck even more than the guys from AC5 and AC Zero. You also have to pay to have damaged planes repaired or replaced, but it's pretty cheap in AC2; you have to pay full price for a spare plane in Air Combat and you can only have eight at a time.

AC2 added a lot of features that made the game much better, including analog controls. And missiles showing up on your radar, and graphics that are actually pretty good for their age. Planes with different missile capacities also make their first appearance (Air Combat just gave everyone 65 missiles and a ridiculous number of bullets), as do branching missions and named enemy aces. One of them flies a FALKEN and it looks a lot like the superplane in AC5 and AC Zero and he's a real bitch to put down.

It's still missing the ability to look around you with the right analog stick, which I miss from time to time despite hardly ever using it. Also, a lot of planes stall if flown upside down and most of them will stall very easily in one particular mission that requires you to intercept enemy aircraft at a high altitude.

Silly Icon Thing

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:53:23 GMT

From lennoxmacbeth

1. Comment to this entry saying 'ICONS!' and I will pick 6 of your icons.

2. Make an entry in your own journal and talk about the icons I picked!

1. This is Rally Cheyenne from the anime and manga Silent Mobius. She's the main characters' boss and a pretty mysterious woman. She's my favourite character from the series and I got this image from a poster or CD booklet or something. It's a peaceful shot of her, which is perhaps a little unusual given her jobs. And her hair is usually a silvery white. I'm using it as my default icon here and at one or two other websites.

2. This is Alouette from the game La Pucelle Tactics. She's a nun who goes around beating monsters (and Prier, the main character) over the head with a Bible. Oh, and wears a miniskirt under her long coat. This is a shot of her being a bit embarrassed and comes up a couple times in the game. I don't use this one all that often.

3. Despite the similarities to the first icon, this is Madoka Ayukawa from the anime and manga Kimagure Orange Road. She's one confusing character with many moods and often acts a good deal older than her supposed age (Middle school. Really.). She also plays a mean sax. This shot of her comes from an image of her embracing her (female) friend Hikaru. Another soothing image.

4.This is Isadora from the seventh Fire Emblem game (the first released for GBA Stateside). She is not the strongest or most durable Paladin, though she gets good speed. Perhaps not the best character in terms of fighting ability or most interesting personality since she joins pretty late and has little personal plot, but I've always had a thing for women in armour. With a little luck, she can be a decent Paladin, but it's just not really a power class. I mostly use this one when I'm posting about games or feeling fighty.

5. This is an Air Force patch for a unit involved with the B-2, I forget exactly how. The Latin at the bottom means 'Tastes like Chicken.' I think I got the image from the Newsweek website and I use this icon when I'm feeling silly or random.

6. My newest icon, this is Quon from the anime RahXephon, wrapped up in a blanket on a snowy day if I remember right. I mostly use this one when the weather turns bad or cold. Like now, when the rain's coming down and there's a flood warning for a good piece of the state.

AWA

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:48:34 GMT

Well, that was fun. Stuff happened, not worth writing about. Met some old friends, saw some interesting cosplayers, took next to no pictures. Some days make me wish I had no sense of smell, and being around some of the larger and more enclosed crowds in that con definitely makes the list.

I went to a couple panels and they were fun. The hentai panel showed a couple episodes of Ogenki Clinic and it's very funny dubbed. You get some interesting crowd responses in panels like that. The panel on anime princesses was a little Code-Geass heavy even if Cornelia is awesome, but I understand that no one wants to read the Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind manga on a projector. The guys running the panel admitted to liking the manga Kushana a lot and that's cool. Another panel on the Craziest Anime Deaths was also kinda funny in the grotesque way you'd expect, with quite a number of children dying and a lot of Fist of the North Star clips.

I watched the Macross movie and it was interesting; a guy pointed out plotholes afterwards, but stuff happens when you try to cram quite a large number of episodes into an hour and a half. It says a lot about how the fandom sees Minmey that most of the room applauded when Hikaru slapped her towards the end. Her song at the end is actually kinda catchy. Also watched a couple episodes of the Dirty Pair TV series and it's ok. And I also watched something called Cobra: Drive Time that's one ridiculous time travel story where nothing makes sense.

Stuff I bought:
Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory because I loved that particular Gudam series and I wanted to watch the episodes I kept missing while it was on Cartoon Network
Martian Successor Nadesico set because I remember liking the first few episodes and I really want to watch the rest.
CDs with music from Kimagure Orange Road and Utena because those series had great music and it's not necessarily easy to find.
2 volumes of You're Under Arrest; very funny, don't know if there's more.
Iono-sama Fanatics because it's funny, silly lesbian fun and the dealer was selling manga at half-price.
Poster for Momocon because I have some nice memories of that and the poster had the image from a great shirt.

Fun but exhausting, not sure I'd do it again next year.

AWA This Weekend

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:32:11 GMT

I'll be at Anime Weekend Atlanta this weekend. I plan to head out there some time Friday afternoon, probably early afternoon. I've got a room with some people from the local anime club and I hope that two and a half days with other anime fans don't drive me crazy. To be honest, half the reason I'm going to AWA is just to get out of the house on a weekend for a change.

I started school as a grad student about a month ago. I'm in something called the MAT in Science Education program in the College of Education at UGA. Basically, I'll be getting certified to teach (assuming I remember to take the test in the spring and some other stuff) while working on a master's. That means I'll probably be tormenting high schoolers within a year or two if I can find a job as a physics/physical science teacher. Which might not be too hard since we seem kinda rare compared to biology teachers for whatever reason.

Classes have been ok despite starting at 8AM four days a week. I haven't spent much time randomly talking to faculty (which I probably should), but the program doesn't require a thesis or similar and I like my time alone in the library or somewhere else with good seats. One of my instructors is a bit... hrm.... zealous about things like the environment and ecojustice and so on and expects us to share at least some of it. I don't and I don't expect that to change much any time soon.

Oh, and it's finally raining here. Right through the weekend, it looks like, with scattered rain all next week. I left my umbrella on a bus this evening, so it looks like I'll have to buy another one soon.

Ok, time to start packing. Like the saner class of con-goer, I'll be bringing a towel and stuff to wash with, not crazy costumes and a small liquor store.

Solo Wing Pixy

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:02:05 GMT

Just got linked to this from TVTropes and thought it was funny. This goes out to all the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha fans out there:
This is the opening narration to Ace Combat Zero with some Lyrical Nanoha clips. I think it mostly plays on both series' use of the name Belka. Not sure if the names Solo Wing or Pixy have anything to do with it, though.

Oh, and there seems to be another one based on The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

So yeah. Been busy lately, and I'll probably get more so from here on out. I'll definitely have less late night stuff, though, because I need to get up early now.

Vaio AO Home va ray...

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:18:06 GMT

Ah, four sheets to the wind and no one's online for me to talk to. C'est la vie. Anyway, the post title's more or less a line from a song from LEXX. I like that series a little, but it's not my favourite Sci-FI Channel series by any means. And now they've renamed themselves SyFy, which is Polish for syhpilis. What does it mean for LJ that there's a drunk emoticon?

Didn't even have much tonight. A beer with pizza for dinner, some bourbon on the rocks, bourbon + American Honey (bit sticky sweet straight, but decent mixer), and a martini. And that all leaves me singing Jackaroe and other random songs. Oh, and feeling very sleepy. Kinda sad that the best 'warm and fuzzy' feeling I know comes from liquor. Ma... nusuth.

I promise, the teal deer will be back soon. Just as soon as I find something I feel like posting about.

Manga Again

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 02:37:12 GMT

I've bought a few volumes of manga lately. First, volume 9 of Emma, which is the second collection of side stories. They're mostly slice-of-life stuff, like how the Molders first met or two of their maids out shopping. Some are touching, some funny, some cute. Interesting enough, but only worth buying if you really like Emma.

I also ran over something called S.S. Astro, which is about two new high school teachers and their friends. It's a four-panel series that's pretty funny. Some of you guys will love it because one of the older (female) teachers has a serious crush on one of the newcomers. There are a number of gaming jokes, but most of the humour is silly stuff.

Finally, another volume of Oishinbo. This one contains stories about sushi and seafood, which I consider a bit redundant since the first volume was about Japanese cuisine and kinda seafood-heavy. I can understand why Viz is offering the series a la carte (no, really, that's what it says on the cover), but pulling random storylines and packaging them like this can be a little confusing for those of us who'd like to follow the overall storyline. If any such readers existed, anyway. I don't much mind since it seems to be pretty loose and most of the stories released so far are just one chapter.

Happy Fireworks Day!

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:47:21 GMT

Happy Fourth of July, everyone who doesn't read this journal.

I've been watching Bubblegum Crisis and Babylon 5 DVDs over the past few weeks. I spent a couple episodes with the dubbed version of BGC and it's not half-bad. Nene's English voice is pretty annoying (ok, Nene is annoying, but that's just me), but the rest of it is ok. Some of the dialogue is pretty bad, but it's more a writing thing and maybe a bit of delivery. One small thing that got to me is the Gulf and Bradley executive from the beginning of episode seven: White suit, cowboy hate, walking fat Texan stereotype, not even an half-assed attempt to tack on an accent.

Anyway, the English versions of the songs range from bad to forgettable pop to pretty decent , kinda like the original versions. Hey Mr. Dandy is terrible in both languages. It's just unsalvageably bad. Never the End is sappy in Japanese, cringe-worthy in English. Rock Me is kinda embarrassing. Say Yes is actually pretty good, as are Victory and a couple others. Unfortunately, most of them are just played in the background for a minute or two and it's very hard to make out the words or make any kind of judgment about quality. They also seem to have fallen into a black hole of obscurity and I almost regret that. They are at least better than the things Anime News Network put up as examples of what happens when you force the voice actors to sing... like the Ranma movie.

I've been doing some poking at Anime News Network and it's pretty interesting what the cast of BGC got up to after the series. Sakakibara Yoshiko (Sylia) had played Taeko Yasuko in the Area 88 OVA and Kushana in Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind... and Integra Hellsing. I knew there was a reason I liked Sylia. And Linna's actress was Sumire Kanzaki from Sakura Taisen, Sailor Mars, and Manami Kasuga from KOR (all that threw me for a loop... I must be pretty bad at placing voices).

I've just finished the second season of Babylon 5 and it's pretty good. Some of my favourite episodes are in this season: Knives, The Geometry of Shadows (and hilarious commentary from Sheridan, Ivanova, and Garibaldi), The Fall of Night. Some of my favourite moments are also in the season: Sheridan spacing a teddy bear, Ivanova dealing with the Lumati ambassador, the Psi-Corps commercial from And Now For a Word, a couple others. Am I the only person who gets cheap laughs by replacing 'telepath' with 'gay' in the context of that commercial? 'The other kids hate me because I'm different and they know it' (or something like that).

Season 3 has a lot of episodes I like and this is where things really get moving. The first two seasons seem mostly about setting up the world and getting the cast into place, which was not helped by replacing the station's commander. Looking through the episode guide, I find a few episodes I thought were in season 4 for some reason. Have I mentioned I have a very poor sense of time?

Anyway, it'll be a good season to go through and I have season 4 after that, which is where most of the heavy fighting occurs. I got it for $25 at Best Buy, which is pretty good. Still hard to believe that it's already been ten years since the series ended. I don't know if I'll buy season 5 at any point. The episodes I've seen were pretty bad and season 4 wrapped up most of the major plotlines pretty well.

Three Months? Really?

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:52:27 GMT

In case anyone was wondering, I didn't die in that blizzard that hit Georgia back at the beginning of March. I just haven't felt like posting much lately. I say blizzard, it was maybe six inches in my area, but that's a lot for this part of the country. Trees down, power out for days for some people, and it was generally unpleasant once you got over the novelty of snowballs.

Lately, I've been reading commentary by Slacktivist (link is to an index of the relevant posts) on the truly terrible Left Behind series by Jenkins and LaHaye. The posts explain just how terrible and badly written they are, both as theology and as literature and as general stupidity. The comments are generally thoughtful, though they tend to wander onto new topics almost at random. The commentary only goes a few pages each week, so it took Slacktivist about five years and about 180 posts to cover the first novel. Interesting ride, though.

A comment to one of Slacktivist's posts (somewhere in the 160s) mentions that Catholic liturgical music (and other sacred music, I suppose) is actually pretty good, especially when compared to contemporary 'Christian music,' which is barely music and probably about as Christian as an Easter egg. Anyway, this reminded me of a moment from Babylon 5 where Sheridan experiences a 'moment of perfect beauty' as a lesson from Kosh. And it was a slightly trippy performance of Puer Natus est Nobis in the form of Gregorian chant. Definitely Catholic, and a little poking around the web says that it's part of a Christmas Day Mass.

Reading this commentary has gotten me onto the depressing topic of religion again and how it relates to society as a whole and the government in particular. It gets all tangled up in the fundamental conflict of democracy, the principles of majority rule and minority rights (or, rather, equal rights for all citizens). It seems that the price of an open society with liberty of conscience is the existence of truly bizarre sects, some of whom would love to take over and impose their demented vision on the rest of us. I take a stand that might seem odd to some people. I'm more or less indifferent to the Pledge, though I wouldn't mind dropping the words 'under God.' It's just not as important as beating back the Creationists trying to shoehorn anti-science into the classrooms (shades of Lysenko, with consequences just as dire) or keeping candidates who are a bit out there as far from the seat of power as we can. This post will deal with certain forms of Christianity, but that's because it's the biggest religion in the States and the one most likely to create serious problems in the long term. Quite a bit might apply to other loopy cults.

Now, I'm not the most empathic person out there, but one of the things that strike me most about the more virulent strains of Christianity is the complete inability to even think the words 'live and let live.' To them, the very existence of people who believe in other gods or no gods or even in the same god but with different words in the hymn book seems to be a terrible threat to be exterminated by conversion or other means. I've seen several explanations advanced for this and it seems worthwhile to lay them out. Some of these hypotheses (read: armchair psychology from the bored) might cross over with their anti-intellectualism and other ideas.

The first is that the fundamentalist faith is hollow and the worldview runs counter to reality in many ways. The strain of the cognitive dissonance and the centrality of unwavering faith in the culture makes the existence of other beliefs and actual threat. Acknowledging them, or God forbid! considering their claims or thinking seriously about things might lead them away from that rock-solid world-denying faith. I say it's hollow because, well, some forms of this religion aren't much more than a pyramid scheme that emphasizes evangelization above all else except the 'God hates X' rhetoric. Others emphasize a euphoria or ecstasy, which is not uncommon in religion, but here takes not only the foremost place but is practically the only place.

A second explanation is suggested by what someone called the 'Every little thing is true or the whole scheme is false' approach they take to Scripture, especially the loopier prophecies. Combined with what seems to be a complete lack of nuanced thought on any issue, their love of moral absolutes, and the One True Faith idea, we again have other people's behaviour as a threat even when it doesn't directly affect them. Their world lies on a series of simple (and simplistic, or at least simple-sounding or simpleminded) propositions used to construct elaborate fantasies. This can be tied to their opposition to gay marriage, especially the presentation of gay marriage as a threat to traditional marriage when the divorce rate has been climbing just fine without it. Their thinking simply cannot accomodate the idea that other people are not bound by their narrow prejudices.

Third is something I came across in a discussion of Puritanism: The idea of communal responsibility and defense in a demon-haunted world. That is, the idea that if any one member of the community is weak in faith, belongs to the wrong faith, or lacks faith altogether, he puts the whole at risk. And in the worldview we're talking about, demons are very real and blamed for anything from a snowstorm on Sunday that forces churches to close to the local football team losing. We hear echoes of the idea in the constant insistance that the US is a christian nation.

Finally, there's just simple tribalism and the Us vs Them mentality and all the shit that digs up. Self-explanatory and as old as humanity. This is probably just a contributing factor that hybridizes with all the others.

I don't know why I have such a morbid fascination with this particular puzzle-box of American culture. Maybe it's because I don't believe and can't see myself ever believing and there's the draw of the unknowable. There's no way I'll ever know what it's like to honestly believe that people lived with dinosaurs, that my neighbour's beliefs actually matter to me, and that it's actually a good thing to badger total strangers into converting. It's almost enough to make me consider adopting some of the pagan heroic ethos and just live for fighting and fame. At the very least, I want to make my own mead some time.

So back to politics and how this is related. I was reading a book about the creationism-evolution 'debate' and it brought up the term 'science-stopper:' Postulating miracles or other unknownable causes stops investigation. Science cannot allow that, because that's what science is: investigation of the world according to certain principles. And it hasn't been wrong yet about continuing to investigate; answers, admittedly tentative and partial answers, are always out there.

Similarly, the fundamentalist mindset is a debate-stopper. It's impossible to reason with them because their positions are not based on reason. They're based on fiat from 'on high.' When the world is viewed in absolute terms, compromise is impossible and compromise is the lifeblood of democracy: all sides give ground in the short term for the greater good in the long term. Basta. Terrible topic and it always just goes around in circles. Enough for now, though I can't promise not to babble about it again later. I find myself wondering if I've posted along the same lines before. If I've started to repeat myself, I may as well just close this whole thing down.

I mentioned back in February that I'm following a manga called Oishinbo about food. The latest volume to come out is about Ramen (a specific type of noodle, not the packaged stuff you see most often in the States) and Gyoza. Gyoza are an import from China, the Japanese version usually being fried and heavy on garlic for some reason. In China, jiaozi (I think that's the right pinyin) are typically boiled (or steamed or pan fried; I favour pan frying left-over boiled jiaozi as a lunch food) with fillings based on Chinese cabbage or chives, with no garlic. It's also pretty strongly associated with the North and Beijing. Oddly enough, garlic is stereotypically a Northern food (as is lamb/mutton, but that's beside the point). Anyway, towards the end of one story, one character produces steamed gyoza with a translucent rice-based skin. Can anyone say dim sum? Ok, maybe not with the rice skin, but the point stands.

Anyway, I love jiaozi and I'm pretty good at making them. They're just incredibly time-consuming and tedious to make alone and, like so many Chinese dishes, not terribly practical for serving one. On the other hand, they do make a pretty good meal with no side dishes. Damn. I'm making myself hungry.

One last thing: The commenters on Slacktivist's commentary have written a good deal of interesting fanfiction arising from their discussions, mostly slashy snippets mocking lines from the novel and oddball What If scenarios. I might cook up one or two, though I'll almost certainly do so without reading the actual novels. The blog I linked to is actually a collection of their fiction.

SNOW?1

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:23:14 GMT

It's snowing. Light, but it's piling up just a little, especially on the trees. It was raining earlier, but now it's snowing. In Georgia. In February. Just thought it was odd enough to mention. It might shift back to rain later.

I've cleared two of the four storylines in Warriors Orochi now, Shu and Wu, which leaves Wei and the Samurai Warriors storylines. After that, I foresee grinding to level up characters I like but unlocked too late and to get all the equippable abilities and maybe a few high-end weapons for my favourite characters. Weapons fusion can make enemy officers very easy to take down: High level Flame or Bolt element (extra damage is always good), Flash to break guards, Might and Brave for higher damage in general, and Slay for a chance of just slashing off a large chunk of health bar. Agility optional for slower characters. I also add Range for characters with good radial attacks for crowd clearing. With this sort of setup, even Lu Bu and Honda Tadakatsu (the strongest Dynasty and Samurai Warriors characters) melt very very quickly as long as you can keep them on the defensive. Orochi takes a little more defensive play.

The DS version of Fire Emblem has revealed one very small feature that irritates me: dodge is calculated as Speed + 1/2 Luck, whereas the traditional calculation is 2* speed + Luck. This is a hideous nerf to units that rely on dodging and relatively few units have much in the way of defense. Oh, and the maps tend to be kind boring with little terrain to take advantage of. I think I should try to see how it was calculated in the original game or the SNES version because several tweaks have been made to the games over the years and this might be one of them. I know that it was 2xSpd + Lck in the fourth game and later, which was also the first appearance of the weapons triangle. That triangle was retroactively added to the DS remake

Marth is not as awesome as Sigurd or Celice

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 03:45:05 GMT

Bought Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for the DS on Friday. It's yet another remake of the original Fire Emblem that came out on the NES all those years ago. Marth is the main character of this story and he's not much more than ok so far. Admittedly, level 5 or 6 characters don't exactly dominate the Fire Emblem battlefields especially when you have no terrain to work with. Caeda (your first Pegasus Knight) is starting out very good for me, but I'm not as enthusiastic about the other characters. But, as the title says, the lords from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War were pretty overpowered even before getting their hands on Holy Weapons.

The DS version has a short prologue tacked on the front that's good for giving Marth and your cavaliers a couple extra levels before the first real chapter. And dumping Jeigan (or another character) if you feel like it. He is the original Jeigan character, a paladin who's significantly stronger than your other starting units but has crap for stat growth, so it's not like I miss him much.

There's also a 'Reclass' feature that I'm pretty sure is new. Sadly, there are class restrictions that keep you from just mounting your entire army as cavalry. I don't think I'll bother with it my first time through, though it is amusing to consider the possibilities. Like Caeda as a myrmidon and swordmaster. Same goes for the blacksmith following your army around who can forge your weapons to make them better. It seems to be mostly a waste of gold and I'm pretty miserly in Fire Emblem games.

I also got my hands on Warriors Orochi recently. It's a crossover between Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors and a pretty decent game. I'm doing the Shu storyline just now and I'm using Yue Ying, Xing Cai, and Ginchiyo Tachibana as my main team. Yes, I created a team of all women as soon as I could. Surprised? Xing Cai is a bit of a weak link in the team, but I'm not sure who I'd replace her with if I benched her now. It's not like I need to have an all-female team, it's just that I dislike most of the other characters available right now.

I'm also disliking how many missions have 'Keep NPC X alive' as a victory condition. Even worse are stages where you have to keep two of them alive (or more, God forbid; two's the limit so far). It would be much easier if I could talk someone into doing co-op with me: one person to babysit, one to kick ass and achieve objectives. The game is a pretty big spike in difficulty from DW5 in general and the escort aspect is just adding frustration on top of it.

If I want to get all the 'abilities' to power up my team, I'm going to have to use everybody a fair bit, which I'm not looking forward to at all. Really, there are a couple dozen skills with 10 or 20 levels each; each character has 4 skills and there are 70-odd characters. But at least that can be done on Easy difficulty. Weapon fusion can create some very nice weapons if you have a bit of luck in what you pick up, but it gets pretty expensive if you have to move a lot of stuff. Like converting a fully-pimped first weapon to a second weapon. I should probably grind a bit in Free mode or hop to another storyline to get more characters.

That's about it for games. Let's move on to manga. I now own all of Gunsmith Cats and the ending is more than a bit screwy. Not much else to say about it, except that it's the reason I picked that song at the bottom of the post.

I also bought a volume of something called Oishinbo. It's a very very long-running manga in Japan and Viz is releasing a 'Best of' type edition here, sorta like what they did with Golgo 13. It's a little different from the usual things that get released here and it gives me just a little hope that Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou might be picked up some day. Anyway, Oishinbo is about gourmet food and some slightly whacky people who love it. Not Iron Chef whacky (well, at least most of the time... I think), but eccentric. Sadly, it's not a series to read while hungry unless you have some sort of vendetta against Japanese food.

Oishinbo has a lot to say about food, hospitality, and friendship, and things like that. Funny, poignant, and mouthwatering. It's also heavily annotated since it deals with a subject most people Stateside only know a little about and it's better than most other manga with notes in that it actually has page numbers on most pages. There is nothing more annoying than finding notes in the back of a volume of manga and then being unable to find what the frak it's referring to. The first collection is dedicated to Japanese cuisine and it seems that the second one will be about drinks. Wines, sake, and so on. I'm looking forward to it.

And, finally, I ran over Sketchbook over at Onemanga. It's a pretty cute series about a spacey art club. For those of you familiar with Azumanga Daioh, it's best summed up as Osaka getting a spinoff series. And she has friends just like her. Sketchbook is in four-panel format just like Azumanga Daioh, but the humour is a little drier.

What Super Bowl?

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 02:42:28 GMT

Yeah, I have the Super Bowl on tv and I'm posting on LJ . I slept through most of the first half because I didn't get to bed until 4 last night. Just one of those nights where you can't sleep. Which are good nights for watching old series on DVD. I'm going through Babylon 5 again starting from the first season. It has quite a few weak episodes like Soul Hunter and Mind War, but it's very important for the later plot line. Mind War is redeemed slightly by introducing Bester, one of my favourite characters, and by the bit at the beginning where Talia elbows Garibaldi in the guts. Soul Hunter is just bad.

Anyway, I've been following a thread about sci-fi and fantasy on a forum I go to. More specifically, it started with a link to a column complaining about the lack of non- white, straight male protagonists. And goes on for over a dozen pages of rambling bull, mostly about 'privilege' and why the 'problem' actually matters, a number of people who just post to say they don't care, and lots of personal attacks. I'm one of those people who don't really care either way and I posted some of my thoughts on why I think the situation exists. No one ever responds to anything I post there, so I figured I'd post here and see if anyone has thoughts.

Well, to start, sci-fi and fantasy writers tend to be a pretty white group of guys and pasty pale is the stereotype of the readers. This the usual angle taken by the people most vocal about the need for more diversity in the genres. I think they're missing half the point: In addition to being white and male, the writers and readers also tend to be nerds. This also has implications for the genre but it's not so much the elephant in the room as the couch: it's a big piece, a frequent base, but not often noticed. No single perspective on the issue is entirely correct, but I think this gives some insight that is easily overlooked.

I read Benjamin Nugent's American Nerd yesterday and he manages to put into words what I consider the basis of our indifference to questions of gender and race in sci-fi and fantasy. It all has roots in something considered a defining trait of nerds: the lack of social awareness and skills. We don't care all that much about people, as individuals or groups; at least, not as much as we do about whatever we're nerdy about.

This is strongly apparent in early SFF: Read Asimov, especially his short stories; Dick; Clarke; and for that matter most other old school writers. Characters are not much more than marrionettes to deliver a few lines, throw the switches, and act out what has to be done. Protagonists are almost universally male, mostly because of historical roles in exploration and computer science (and admit it: female programmers are still a bit on the rare side); ethnicity is almost never explicitly stated because it is just irrelevant. Names are generally Ango-Saxon in origin... or at least sound English-y or generically American to me since I'm not that up on name origins. Character relationships are rarely developed in much detail. A couple may be married, some guys might be friends, but that often affects just a few lines

The point I'm trying to make is that nerds tend not to place that much emphasis on the social side of things. The standards that sci-fi and fantasy are judged by do not prioritize issues of gender or race. What gets noticed is world-building: how the place is put together, the 'system' of magic, its past, the beasts and forests and moutains. Internal consistency gets points, blatantly ripping off someone else loses them. Inhabitants are noticed mostly for their picturesque qualities. Magic, technology, history, and geography are the focuses of attention from both sides of the page; character development can be significant, but sometimes regrettably considered optional. A premium is placed on good writing, but with a different emphasis from the standards used to judge 'regular' fiction.

Of course, a lot of sci-fi and fantasy is just plain crap. No one denies it. And many authors give more emphasis to the social side of things. Le Guin seems to develop her worlds based on social or biological premises rather than physical ones, A Canticle for Leibowitz is almost entirely based on the development of society and history after a nuclear war. And the genre will change as new authors come in; a lot of the complaints seem based on the old guard and they'll fade eventually.

This indifference is not (necessarily) malicious or rooted in prejudice so much as in personality and maybe neurological wiring. To some extent, nerds are just not wired to care about people, even the ones who don't fit an Asperger's diagnosis. The nerd and socially unaware nature of sci-fi writers and fans needs to be taken into account in talking about this issue. Societal issues and such have an effect, but when the genre is so strongly associated with a particular type of person, the nature of that type has to be accounted for.

I usually put storytelling at the top of what I look for when I read something. Diversity is not something I'd consider good of itself in fiction, or at least not something worth pursuing at the cost of the story. Not that I have anything against women or blacks or whatever. I just put the demographics very very low at the bottom of the priorities list. When it doesn't have a place in the story or the construction of the world, adding those characters just comes off as cheap and gimmicky.

Anyway, that's my two cents. The thread has just been on my nerves lately and I'd like to hear your thoughts if anyone's reading this journal. Nugent's book is a good read, but he has his own blind spots and the second half is very strongly based on his circle of friends. I haven't felt like giving a damn about anything at the moment but that's been coming and going for me lately.

Lost My Soul to Fallout... Again

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:20:04 GMT

Booted up Fallout 2 the other day for the first time in a long time and finished it in... erm... under a week, I think, mostly because I already know the 'good' path backwards and forwards. I decided to make a gunslinger type character with One-handed and Fast Shot as my traits to try out a new combat style; tagged Small Guns, Doctor, and Speech. I pretty much always went through the game as a sniper with Gifted... those seven extra stat points really made a difference, and I really missed making eye-shots for ridiculous damage. 5 Strength, 8 Perception, 4 Endurance, 2 Charisma (just enough to get Cassidy on my team), 5 Intelligence, 9 Agility, 7 Luck (unless I misremembered something); I got all the stat boosting modules (+1 to Str, Per, Cha, and Int), Hubologist Zeta scan (+2 luck), and APA (+4 str), so my character was pretty good by the end.

I started the game by running down to Navarro for Advanced Power Armour for the hell of it. It's kinda fun being almost invincible... not so fun getting killed by Enclave patrols every few minutes. If I remember right, I sold off the junk from Navarro (like the Plasma Rifle I couldn't use) in San Fran to get myself some guns: a .44 Magnum and maybe a .223 Pistol. The two best conventional ammo-based pistols in the game, especially early on. With 9 AP, that's 3 Magnum shots per turn, 4 with Bonus Rate of Fire and one AP to reload once I got a speed-loader attached. They start to fade once you try going after Super Mutants and tougher, though. For them, a Pulse Pistol or Gauss Pistol does wonders. Same 2 AP to shoot, much higher damage; Pulse Pistol has crap for range and ammo capacity, but Gauss ammo is ridiculously rare until you loot the Enclave. And the Gauss Pistol uses a lot more ammo than the Rifle.

The encounter rate is seriously borked on newer computers, so I downloaded an unofficial patch that fixes that and a few hundred other bugs, so I'll be giving that a spin soon. Seriously, Deathclaw packs, aliens, and leftover Super Mutants are the freaking basis of late-game grinding; there's not much to do that's worth much experience once you've done the major San Fran quests and gassed up the tanker and still haven't quite reached level 24 for the Sniper perk. And getting those encounters at maybe one per month of wandering is just too damn slow.

Also went through the first three Ace Attorney games in the last month or two. Good games, very funny, but also frustrating now and then because every case has at least one or four points where you have to present a particular piece of evidence but the clues for it are retardedly obtuse.

Mamma Mia!

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 18:50:23 GMT

I'm sure one or two of you would ask me to hand in my Man-card for admitting to it, but I don't care: I like Mamma Mia. I rented it the other day (and it cost nearly as much as the other five DVDs I picked up -- three volumes of RahXephon, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-- damn those new release prices!) and just finished watching it. I knew I had to watch it when I saw a trailer with a clip of Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep singing S.O.S., mostly because the idea of Pierce Brosnan singing ABBA is frikkin' hilarious.

Not that he's much of a singer, mind.

Streep and the rest of the cast are actually pretty good, but Brosnan should've been shoved into a shower with a mic to see if that helped. But, hey, he tries, and it's not like I'd do any better if I sang along. Did I mention the movie can be played in karaoke mode? Perfect for parties. The credits have more songs from the cast and are definitely worth sitting through at least once.

There's also a good version of Does Your Mother Know that reverses the original song and has a very funny dance number to go with it. The movie is a nice silly musical and not as trippy as Across the Universe. Someone described it to me as a 'middle-aged Grease,' which is pretty appropriate considering the age ot those who were young when Grease came out. It's a bit sappy, a bit silly, but funny overall.

Sadly, one of my favourite ABBA songs is not in the movie: Knowing Me, Knowing You. It's a terrible match for the theme, obviously, but I love it.

Not much else to say except Happy New Year, everyone! And Georgia won, which was nice, even if they shot themselves in the foot every four or five plays. Both teams looked half asleep during the first half, honestly.

Wake Me Up For New Year's

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 20:24:49 GMT

Merry Christmas, all you people who aren't reading this. And also happy birthday to lennoxmacbeth . Not much to say on this end.

And here's something to put you all in the mood. I ran over a bit of this while channel surfing one evening a few weeks back and I just have to share it.

Damn You, Winter Sun!

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:33:07 GMT

First bright, sunny day here in a week or so and the high is 39F or thereabouts. So cold outside and the sun is just mocking me with its cheerful light. At least Georgia isn't as screwed over as the rest of the country with snow and ice, though. Just wind and cold that makes me wish I had the money to flee to Florida for the next four or five months. And it's really really hard to do anything wrapped up in blankets.

I've gotten my hands on the second and third Ace Attorney games and I'm on the third case of the second game right now. They're fun games, even if they devolve into trial and error now and then since there are often next to no clues about what to present or when to do it. And Franziska von Karma is kinda cute once you get past the 'whipping people at random' thing. ~~Half~~ Almost all of her poses give me a 'Are you flirting with him?!' vibe. Maybe I should get out more.

I also kinda wish Lana Skye would turn up again, but since she first appeared in the DS remake of the first game (or so sayeth Wiki), that's not likely unless she's in the Apollo Justice game or whatever else Capcom has in the works. What can I say? I like women in uniform. And she had one bizarre squad in that SL-9 case or whatever the case number was.

And to all the people at TVTropes: Nippon Ichi did not just make Disgaea! Half the trope examples from that series apply to everything else they make.

Not much else going on here. Just wanted to bitch about the cold.

My Least Favourite Time of Year

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:05:07 GMT

Frakking cold. Not as bad as New Orleans with the snow and ice and all, but it's still cold here. The forecasts are saying it's going to be a warm week so I'll be making the most of that. Quon up there has the right idea, but it's very hard to type or play games or read with hands bundled up inside the blanket.

I'm renting RahXephon a couple discs at a time from a nice little place near here. They have a great selection and a pretty decent (if small) anime section. I rented Metropolis from them, but the disc is scratched to hell and nearly unwatchable. I gave up about half way through, but I saw enough to tell it's a wonderful film despite its age. I've also rented the third season of the new Doctor Who series and the Master is one hell of a villain. Terrible taste in music and incredibly melodramatic, but one hell of a villain.

Anyway, RahXephon may be best described as Evangelion on antidepressants. Or so people assure me who've seen both; the first five discs of Eva are never in when I'm at the shop. I've just finished the second disc and the mindscrew hasn't really set in yet. I first watched this...gods, six? seven? years ago at a university anime club when it was still new. I could never see the name BONES in the title without thinking of the late DeForest Kelley (it was only a couple years after his death).

Games, games games. Some days it seems like that's all I ever post about here.

I've beaten Chrono Trigger (surprise). Now it's time to do all the endings and pick up one or two items I missed the first time around. Robo, Ayla, and Chrono were my main party for the endgame with Robo's party healing; Ayla's strength, status recovery, and stealing; and Chrono's Luminaire spell and Rainbow sword. Robo, Chrono, and Lucca are also a good party if you want to trade Ayla's physical power for Lucca's Flare spell. Since I did it for Fire Emblem 4 (and I'm bored), I'll do character evaluations for CT:

1) Ayla: Absolute beast. Maxes HP, Strength, and Stamina early; capable of equipping very good armour. She can tear through enemies, steal all sorts of goodies while grinding, and provide a bit of healing on the side. Oh, and she's tied for highest natural speed among recruitable characters. I recommend the Giant's Claw for grinding the last few Techs you need; specifically, there's a room with two apes that give 30 TP per battle and two Megalixirs if you steal. Also be sure to pick up a couple Gold Studs in the Black Omen if you do that dungeon; 1/4 MP costs? Yes, please.

The DS remake gives her a counterattack accessory that boosts critical rate. The quest chain is freaking tedious, but it's a great accessory if you don't want/need to steal anything. I normally give Ayla the Alluring Top to give her stealing a boost. I'm not entirely looking forward to grinding my way to max level (or near it) to get her final weapon, amazing though I hear it is.

2) Robo: Second beast. Maxes HP, Strength, and Stamina around the same time (or earlier) as Ayla, comes with amazing healing abilities, and some great physical Techs. His 'magical' Techs aren't that impressive, but his Electrocute costs 3MP less than everyone else's final tech and does almost the same damage. Great armour options, and he's the most resilient healer. Starts slow, but gains a big boost of speed with his sidequest. Which I will do again.

3) Chrono: Great physical attacker, pretty fast, obligatory for a good bit of the game. Luminaire + Gold Stud are almost enough to solo Lavos. A bag of Megalixirs and luck in avoiding its ability to remove your immunity to status effects. Not much else to say, really. Other than to say that pairing the Rainbow with the 80% counterattack rate accessory is just plain cheesy. Naturally equips the good armour. Almost forgot: One of two characters to have a revive spell.

4) Magus: Loses a bit of his power when he becomes a party member, but still a freaking beast. Tied with Ayla for fastest party member, he has the level II spells of every element and the only Dark attack spells. Great physical attacker with a good scythe, has some decent custom armour and access to top-tier regular armour, give him a Gold Stud and turn him loose.

5) Lucca: Tied for slowest with Robo (I think), but stays slow without equipment or a regular diet of Speed ~~Tabs~~ Capsules. Her Wondershot is incredibly erratic and the DS release claims its damage rolls are influenced by playtime...and the clock resets when you start a New Game Plus. Her armour options are more limited than Ayla's, but the Prismatic Dress is good. Her Flare Tech and other fire spells are ridiculously powerful unless the enemy is strong against fire. I really wish Accuracy ~~Tabs~~ Capsules were available because I can't see Lucca or Marle doing much damage with the way their weapons and stats line up. Not that they're meant to do much, really.

6) Marle: Bit faster than Lucca and Robo, her (so-far) best weapon doesn't have the ridiculous damage potential of the Wondershot, but it's a lot more consistent. Again, limited armour options and physical damage. Even her magic stops at Ice II and that does maybe half the damage of anyone else's most powerful spell option. Her revive spell is much more powerful than Chrono's and she has very good single-target healing, but that's about it. Good character, key to obtaining at least two endings, Megalixir dispenser if you need party heal.

7) Frog: Good physical attacker, bit slower than Chrono. His Magic stat is low, so his healing and spells aren't as useful as, say, Marle or Robo's. The Masamune is a great weapon, Frog gets good armour options, but he just feels a bit second-best when Robo covers healing, Marle covers the same element, and everyone else has much much better magic.

I picked up Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney the other day. Good silly game that actually uses the stylus significantly unlike the RPGs I usually play. I have to say, the legal system is completely fucked up in Wright's world, especially the rules for acquiring evidence. And discovery. And somehow Phoenix graduated law school without learning even the basics of trial procedure (admittedly, the 'initial trial' system is new, but still...). Anyway, I've finished the first three trials, but von Karma is a pain in the ass to defend against.

Chrono Trigger!

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:05:08 GMT

One of my favourite old RPGs has come out for DS and I spent a few hours with it last night. I'm right now in the incredibly depressing 2300 AD era with Robo in my party. So it's almost magic time; I'm getting tired of only have two Techs per person, only one of which is useful for two of them. I love this game.

I finished Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure the other day. It's easy, though the final boss took a tiny bit of grinding since Kururu leaves the party before the final chapter and her replacement was severely underleveled. Unlike most Nippon Ichi games, this one uses leaked experience, but it's not enough to keep your reserve characters up to par. Looking at some game sites, the game originally had very easy stratRPG-style combat with movement grid and all, but that got stripped out for the DS release. I might take another run later to get all the puppets and do all the sidequests, but I'm focusing on Chrono Trigger just now.

Also finished the first story of Odin Sphere a few days ago. The final boss of Gwendoyn's story is pretty hard if you don't remember to stock up on healing items and Painkiller potion. Otherwise, it's just a long long grinding battle, made longer by her ability to heal herself. Next up is the Cornelius, the sword-wielding Pooka Prince. Silly rabbit, but I won't make Trix jokes.

My sister and I went down to Atlanta to see the Terracotta Army exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta on Wednesday. They had a number of great pieces. One of the statues, a civil servant, had a face just like the mask from V for Vendetta, which was kinda weird. We also took some time to walk through the stuff on loan from the Louvre. They have some incredible pieces up since that exhibit is focusing on masterpieces from all periods. The High's collection of American art seems to have a lot of furniture, includings lots of chairs cruelly put out to taunt footsore patrons. And a chest of drawers that might've been made in Athens, GA. Great museum, worth walking through once or twice a year.

One thing to remember if you visit: Watch out for the back of the elevator in the main building. Clear glass as the back wall of the elevator, clear glass as the back wall of the building. I walked right into the damn thing and my first words were 'I thought that only happened to birds.' Then I noticed the five or six other grease marks left by other people's noses/foreheads. At least one was about my height (besides my mark, of course).

And it looks like some drunk idiot called me seven times in fifteen minutes around 2AM last night. About half an hour after I told the idiot he had the wrong damn number. I don't think I'd miss my phone very much if I gave it up. If it weren't for the whole 'need some way for people to contact me for interviews and such' thing, I'd chuck it right now.

Birthday Post

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:03:12 GMT

Another year older, another year closer to the grave. You've heard all the cliches.

So yeah, happy birthday to me. DeepDiscount.com has a sale on right now, so I ordered the Bubblegum Crisis box set last Friday for just under $30. It just got here so I'll be watching that over the next few days. It comes with a whole heap of music videos for the songs from the series. Great songs, too, if you don't mind a bit of 80s. And the series is very very 80s. Probably won't post anything about it. Great series, everyone should watch it. Well, everyone who likes anime.

I finished Fire Emblem 7 a few days ago. I got all the extra chapters and 32x comes right before the final battle and is basically an excuse to give Hector a huge pile of EXP. Spiral maze filled with Snipers and Generals? Hand him a Hand Axe and a Wolf Beil (got at least two spares from his quest to get Armads) and let him rip. It was a bit of a push to get 32x since chapter 32 has a large map (for this game; it's not a patch on FE4's maps) and Hector walks slowly. Like I said in my last post, I decided to train Nino this time around and she turned out ok, with great dodging and decent Magic power.

Chapter 32 basically requires a three-pronged attack: one group going due north, a second due east along the southern edge, and a third northeast through the mountains. Pegasus or wyvern units can roam at will to take out the long-range magic and ballistas on the map. The northern route has cavaliers, some infantry, and pegasus reinforcements. A well-trained Raven can take it with a little backup. The southern route just has cavalry, which Hector and Oswin can munch on for EXP. The center is a bit odd, but not too bad.

Once you move in on the boss, some Generals will spawn at the fort below her. If Hector or Oswin can move up in time, they'll rip right through them. If not, just use magic.

The last chapter has some tough enemies, who take a lot of effort to kill but drop great weapons. Nergal is a bit tricky to kill, but Athos with Luna is always a good last resort. Same goes for the Dragon, but Hector with Armads and decent speed works at least as well. Anyway, before taking Nergal himself, you have to take out a Druid with a Berserk staff, one of the most dangerous status staves in the game. I completely forgot about that and he hit Dart, my Berserker (yeah, yeah, stop laughing). That...ended messily.

So that wraps up this run through Hector's campaign. I might do Eliwood's campaign some time. Hector has a few extra maps, two more recruitable characters, and a general increase in difficulty. But I don't want to do Hard Mode because it cuts EXP gains down sharply, which is the most BS method of increasing difficulty they could have chosen. Extra enemies, stronger enemies, better equipment for enemies would all have been ok. But cutting down on EXP is just cheesy.

Then again, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones was too easy because it had unlimited EXP available if you just went monster hunting long enough. And had the cash to buy weapons for it. I booted up a Creature Campaign and (almost) soloed the Tower of Valni with Lute (a Sage, and a very good one); I had to take Colm (Rogue; basically a thief who doesn't need lockpicks) along on a couple levels to open chests. Lots of drops, lots of cool stuff. Then I tried to solo the Lagdou Ruins. She can one-hit most Tower enemies, so that was ok. Ruins enemies are a good bit stronger and much much more numerous so that was not so ok unless I just gave her five Fire tomes (200 shots) and prayed for lots of criticals. Also, the Ruins seem to love destroyable walls, which just eat up even more ammo.

Or I could've cheated and used a certain special Dark tome that has unlimited uses and absurdly high power, but the characters who can use it aren't as good as Lute. So, yeah. I'm thinking about running through Sacred Stones again at some point. The storyline's decent for a Fire Emblem game and I don't remember the characters being much more annoying than usual.

Rhapsody's coming along ok. I'm not consulting any FAQs unless I get really stuck, so I'm probably missing stuff left and right. The dungeons are almost all cut-and-paste rooms in two flavours: cave and generic stone. Maybe the cave will be blue coloured for ice or red for a volcano. Enemies are mostly palette swaps and combat is pretty basic. The game layout is pretty interesting: status information and a map on the top screen, actual playing on the bottom. And I only just noticed that you can play with the stylus; Cornet will follow it around the screen and most of the menus are stylus-compatible.

Week and a half until Chrono Trigger comes out.

Nearing the End

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:38:22 GMT

Can't sleep, so I'll ramble about games. And that emoticon is not at all how I feel on nights like this.

Just one five-turn shopping spree and two or three chapters from the end of Fire Emblem 7. Despite what I said in my last post, I'm training Nino. I gave her the Drops and raised her from level 6 to level 20 in one chapter. Admittedly, this took up a lot of EXP that could've gone to other units, but it was more or less worth it. She's a good fast unit, though plagued by lowish magic growth like all my magic users not named Lucius this time around. And that guy doesn't dodge very well without a cover save due to hideous luck (slightly offset by high speed, but lack of luck can break a dodger).

Vaida is dead because I didn't bother to recruit her. Or rather, I forgot she showed up again in that chapter, didn't remember how to recruit her, and didn't want to play the whole bloody chapter over again just to recruit a subpar character in a class I don't like. For some reason, I just don't like wyvern riders very much. The only reason I used Altenna in FE4 was because she was incredibly awesome and used the Gae Bolg, a legendary weapon that was just as much of a gamebreaker as the others. Pegasus knights are dodging machines and I'm very much partial to those. They're also good against mages because of their high magic resistance, which wyverns trade for higher defense and strength. Or maybe it's a personality thing: I just like Fiora and Farina more than Heath and Vaida.

Anyway, Eliwood has turned out surprisingly well this go around. He is basically a cavalier/paladin with a different job title. He's also pretty similar to Celice from FE4, though Celice was immune to critical hits, got a gamebreaker of a weapon, and had some pretty crazy stat growth. Eliwood is...average, like the cavaliers. And for some strange reason, 'average' stat growth in Fire Emblem either produces stellar characters or nearly unusable ones.

Anyway, I need to get lots of kills for Hector in the next few chapters if I want him to be useful at the end. The main lord of the story is at a serious disadvantage since he promotes so late. And in the case of Hector, his movement is also pretty short so it's not as easy to get him into the action. But I have a plan for the second-to-last chapter that should net him a few levels.

I gave Rhapsody a try today. It's basically a musical dressed up as an RPG. Not a particularly difficult game, certainly not as difficult (so far) as Nippon Ichi's later strat-RPG titles. The art style is closer to La Pucelle than Disgaea and those bloody cats show up. The main character's special attacks are kinda silly: food rains down from the sky to crush your enemies. I'm not kidding. Slices of cake, spiky hard candy, a giant flan, and apparently a stack of pancakes are all options.

The plot so far is about an ordinary girl named Cornet who can talk to puppets who has fallen in love (or just developed a crush on) the local prince and among other things enters a beauty contest dressed in a giant bear costume. Kururu, her companion, is basically Papillon in purple (though I'm pretty sure Papillon wasn't a puppet) and shares her love of giant paper fans. The resident rich bitch Etoile looks oddly like Relena from Gundam Wing for some reason and after meeting her father Sir Rosenqueen, I understand why that store has Netherworld branches.

Nippon Ichi's sense of humour is strongly present. A lot of the jokes are music based, such as Etoile saying 'Money, money, money/ Always sunny/ In a rich woman's world.' It's a decent game if you really really like Nippon Ichi or want a funny slightly odd RPG to pass a few hours. Otherwise, it's just a funny slightly odd RPG that's more a niche title than anything else.

Shiny Shiny Shiny

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 02:43:50 GMT

Bought myself a DS yesterday. And it's shiny and black and already picking up fingerprints. But it's so much better than my old battered first-generation GBA. I plugged in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Aria of Sorrow today and I could see! Used to be, I needed to get into weird positions with a light over my shoulder just right to even make out my character and now I can see everything. Fire Emblem's brighter colour palette doesn't really need the light, but it's good. The buttons feel a bit cramped, but ok except for the difficulty of hitting the A+B+Select+Start reset combo.

The only actual DS game I own at the moment is Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure because it's a Nippon Ichi title and distantly connected to La Pucelle. And might have provided a bonus boss for the first Disgaea. I saw a DS port of Disgaea, but I won't be picking that up. It's a funny game, and a great game, but I don't think owning a second copy of it is worth the price when I can barely get myself to play it on PS2. Probably won't be getting Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, either, mostly because the first game was so disappointing after the shininess wore off.

And Chrono Trigger will be coming out on the DS at the end of the month! Time for Robo to get it on. But, seriously, time for Ayla to kick some ass.

I plowed through the desert level of Fire Emblem today. Got all the items, destroyed the two (not so) ambiguously gay bosses, and managed to get the 700 EXP needed to do the bonus chapter. The bonus chapter's pretty hard, but nets you a nice set of silver weapons and some other gear. Oswin + Javelin = ownage against archers and other physical attackers. Oswin, Raven, Lucius, Canas, Dart, Rebecca and Fiora are promoted now, which gives me some good magical power and four great physical attackers. And one semi-decent sniper; her strength is a bit low. My three lords are now level 20 so they're benched until story events give me the bloody Heaven Seals. That's really the only downside to using Lyn to kill everything in her story: she gets benched for too much of the main story.

That looks about the right size for my main team to finish out the story, sadly. I'm trying to remember if I get another Guiding Ring later on since Serra is also level 20 with terrible Magic but otherwise passable stats. Priscilla is doing pretty well and will definitely be promoted so I can have a mobile healer. Then again, I do have an Earth Seal. Bartre isn't so hot so I'll probably miss Karla this time around unless there's another Arena I can abuse to recover from Farina's 20K hiring fee. Nino probably won't be getting trained and I don't think I'll be using Afa's Drops since I don't have any low level people I really really like and think would benefit from 5% extra growth.

Odin Sphere is going well, though I haven't played it the last few days. From the looks of the story archive, I have a fair ways to go yet on Gwendolyn's story and right now I'm about to head into a volcano (or something like that). So, first, upgrade the last 5-slot bag to 8-slots, then grind some spare cash and buy a couple 'Cooler' potions to keep the heat from damaging her too badly. I'm sure I'll find the recipe for it early in the level, but it's better to be safe.

I'm not doing NaNo this year, but I'll definitely be writing something. Or starting something and dropping it. Something like that. Haven't been able to get myself to set any of my ideas down lately.

And it looks like Georgia lost 49-10. And it was 14-3 at the half when I gave up. Florida is our bane as usual. On the other hand, Tech beat FSU 31-28 so one of my teams won today.

Yes, I'm a racist prick

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:04:13 GMT

lennoxmacbeth linked me to an interesting little CNN piece about an ad that got pulled from Japanese TV:

Actual ad here: EMobile Monkey Ad

It's a monkey in a suit at a podium at something a lot like an Obama rally with red 'Change' signs. The panel of what look to be American expats are mostly offended by how it's apparently calling Obama a monkey and dehumanizing blacks. But the company's mascot is a monkey and that animal has very different baggage on the far side of the Pacific. Oh, and the guy from Temple University at the end just sounds like a pompous prick.

I suppose this raises some questions about racism and cultural sensitivity, but to me it just looks like CNN groping for a story and a group of slightly culture-shocked expats. The history behind monkeys and Africans just isn't there in the Japanese consciousness. For that matter, it looks like the average Japanese citizen knows about as much about Barack Obama as the average American knows about Ma Ying-Jeou (the new Taiwanese President and one smarmy piece of work like most politicians) or perhaps Nicolas Sarkozy. To me (admittedly, I'm about as Japanese as dim sum), the ad's not so much calling Obama a monkey as trying to appropriate some of his success and charisma. And it doesn't look half as stupid as some American cell phone ads. Looking at you, Alltel and AT&T.

I'm not going to deny that the Japanese can be racist as a people, or that the ad would never be greenlit Stateside. It's what happens when a nation is insular and homogeneous enough that the politicians quite frankly don't have to give a damn about minorities. China can be about the same way (~90% are Han Chinese; no one ever remembers the other groups unless they're brought out for ceremonies or something). But demanding that they pay obeisance to American political correctness for ads that would never be seen by American audience? That just sounds arrogant. Besides, it's a cute monkey.

In other news, I've picked up Odin Sphere. The game where you run around and beat the crap out of wild critters (and some humans) with glowing crystals that gain power by sucking up dead enemies' souls. Oh, and you can grow fruits that serve as health potions...which are nourished by the souls of dead enemies. And there's an alchemy system that lets you make things like antidote potions, a painkiller potion that cuts damage in half (very very important for boss fights), and bombs. And your characters get magic...which is fueled by the souls of dead enemies. Strangely, chickens do not eat souls.

I'm playing this game with the English voices, which are no worse than most video game voice acting. Gameplay's not too bad once you get used to the control scheme except for the complete lack of enemy flinch animations. I'm whaling on an enemy and it just keeps right on swinging unless I hit it with a knockdown move. The two kinds of experience (Psypher or weapon; and HP) aren't too hard to manage since the Phozons (souls) that act as EXP for your weapon also power your magic and Health EXP comes from food that you'll be carrying anyway.

Inventory management is a bit of a pain since it works through bags. It looks like you can carry up to five or six, and the largest so far have eight slots and cost 75G (pricey at this stage of the game, but I'm grinding to replace my 5-slot bags; got a 6-slot, but that's ok for now). With seeds, potions, alchemy ingredients, and food, you'll want to max out on bags ASAP. Money is handled a bit differently from most games. Instead of a generic bag of Gil, GP, or bottle caps, you have a bag of actual coins of different value. And just like real life, you tend to wind up with a pile of the lowest value coins that aren't good for much.

The storytelling looks to be what TVTropes calls The Rashomon. It's told as a series of 'books,' interlinked storylines for the different player characters with a lot of overlap. The first one available is Gwendolyn, 'The Valkyrie,' a pretty effective lady with a spear and nice diving attack. I'm looking forward to seeing how the witch Velvet handles with her chains. For those who care about graphics, it's all sprites. And backgrounds that look more or less painted. Very much a 2D game, but it looks good and plays just fine.

Pie Iesu Domine

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:27:22 GMT

Dona eis requiem

Spent the afternoon with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's been a few years since I last saw it and it's better once things have faded a bit. And infinitely better without friends who can quote the movie at you. I'd even forgotten things like Tim the Enchanter and a few early bits. Very funny, I might give the commentary tracks a try later.

Michael Palin has also been on my mind for the last few months because of a woman he's not at all related to (I'm pretty sure). Of course, he's not qualified to run for Veep, but he'd probably be a better candidate. At the least, he'd attract a few joke votes.

Anyway, my Fire Emblem play has stalled a bit because I really really hate the desert level. Low movement for nearly everyone, loads of magic users, and an EXP-stealing git on the far side of the map (and another one nearby). I'll be bringing a thief to get the buried treasures (need a map for that). Hector and Lyn are level 20, Eliwood is 18 or 19 and actually has decent stats. A couple other characters are close to being ready to promote, which might be a problem since I need to gain a lot of EXP on the map to get a bonus level. Anyway, first move will be to dash Florina and Fiora across the map to kidnap Pent and drop him somewhere he can't steal kills. Maybe bring Dart or Bartre to get some kills and extra EXP (bench Eliwood since he can't gain much), and Erk since magic users move more easily in the sand. Oh, and drag a Barrier Staff

The night and fog levels have been a pain for me, mostly because they're fog and night levels. Good thing thieves and the Torch staff are easy to get. I've been stealing lockpicks off enemy thieves since I killed the one carrying the Member Card (it was blocking me from recruiting Legault) and secret shops are the only other source of lockpicks. Not that it matters much; chests and doors are relatively rare.

Dynasty Warriors 5 and DW5: Empires are the other games I've been playing lately. Empires is a bit tedious, but it's kinda fun to use max-level characters to stomp your enemies at the start of each scenario. I'm still not sure what troop numbers do in terms of gameplay, but they don't matter much as long as you don't utterly suck at the game. I should probably create and train a character with Lu Bu's moveset to use in scenarios where the guy has already died.

Edit: Poking around Wikipedia and a couple other sites, it seems that the line is Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis requiem, not Ie Jesu. It's part of the Requiem Mass, specifically, the last lines of the Dies Irae.